


Adrenalize

by Terminallydepraved



Series: Works for Others [44]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Fantasizing, Interrogation, M/M, Rated M for Horny, android!gavin, hacker!nines, horny thoughts, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 07:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terminallydepraved/pseuds/Terminallydepraved
Summary: Nines wasn't used to having spur of the moment ideas. It doesn't take long for him to regret giving in to this one, especially when he finds himself handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room at the DPD.[Prequel to Fixation]





	Adrenalize

**Author's Note:**

> this is for leetmorry over on twitter! she drew me some beautiful art of my ocs in exchange for a prequel to my reverse au fic Fixation where hacker Nines jailbreaks a GV500 construction android out of sheer horny desperation. i hope you guys enjoy!

The room was cold. An air vent directly above Nines’s head whirled softly as it deposited steady bursts of icy air straight on top of his head. He knew it was an intimidation tactic, knew it was to unsettle him, to make him uncomfortable. They did shit like that, using the environment to soften up a suspect before bringing in the big guns. 

In this case, knowing all of that didn’t help much. It didn’t keep Nines warm. 

He let out a harsh breath and looked at his reflection in the one-way mirror across the way from him. He was tempted to shout out at the officer he knew lurked on the other side. To ask them when they’d show their face. To wonder how much longer they were going to keep this up. He was tired, he wanted to say. Hungry. Cold. It’d been hours since those assholes had wrestled him to the ground on his way to the corner store. The bruises had already set in. He wanted to go home.

When the door finally opened, Nines did his best not to think about that. About what he had left at home on his way to that corner store, and what had probably become of it when these cops raided his apartment. The man that entered was the same one who had stood in front of him while the handcuffs were locked behind his back. Tall, mean-eyed, not grinning anymore but he had been then, cruelly and imperiously as he read Nines his rights and told him the jig was most certainly up. Nines hadn’t gotten his name then. Six hours later, he still hadn’t gotten it. 

The detective—Nines had watched enough shitty cop procedural dramas to assume this guy was a detective, not another beat cop—approached the interrogation table slowly, footfalls purposeful and unrushed. He probably wanted Nines to figure that this could take all night if it had to. That he was in no hurry to get to him as evidenced by the  _ six hours  _ he’d kept him waiting. He sauntered over and dragged the opposite chair out from beneath the table. Nines winced when the legs dragged along the cement floor with a piercing, unpleasant shriek. 

“How you feeling?” the man asked, sitting down with a grunt. He sat tall and straight, hands clasped loosely on the table in front of him. There was a wedding ring on one finger. Married. So, miracles did exist. “You doing alright? Sorry we couldn’t get to you earlier,” he said, snorting a little as what little attempt at good-cop failed to stick. “We were  _ so  _ swamped. Largely thanks to you, of course.”

Nines said nothing. He hadn’t said a word since they cuffed him. He just stared, lips a thin line, and waited. He was used to waiting by now after all. 

A dark brow rose towards the man’s hairline. “Still not feeling talkative, huh,” he observed astutely, such a fucking detective, wasn’t he? “Y’know, most people who clam up like this do it ‘cause they’re waiting for a lawyer to arrive. But you haven’t asked for a lawyer. Why is that?”

No response. Nines’s eyes shifted to the floor. He didn’t have the money for one firstly, and what lawyer would be idiotic to take his case? He’d pissed off Cyberlife with what he’d done. No one was suicidal enough to go up against their people, and Nines knew that. So, no. A lawyer wouldn’t help him much here. Silence was a stopgap measure at best, but it was better than talking if only barely. 

“Y’know,” the detective started up again, heedless in the silence Nines offered up. “We ran your prints. Got a whole file on you back on my desk right now, and I’m surprised it didn’t leave a dent when the FBI sent it over and threw it down. You’re Nines, right?  _ The  _ Nines? The NSA and CIA both have files on you for all the shit you’ve pulled with those gadgets of yours. It made a lot of people real nervous hearin’ you’d successfully incited deviancy in a government android. Real nervous.” 

_ Yeah, _ Nines thought silently. He supposed it would make them nervous that a hacker like him succeeded in doing what they’d only hypothesized about with nothing more than a few cables and a laptop a few years out of date. He’d done a lot of shit but he wasn’t all that rich. If someone like him could manage it, it probably made them worry over what someone with a bigger budget and worse intentions could accomplish if they really put their mind to it. 

A rattle above his head signalled another burst from the air vent above his head. Nines closed his eyes and flinched, shivering as prickles of new sweat chilled in the icy stream. The detective kept talking. Something about the crimes he was accused of committing. About what that could mean for him in prison. Fifteen plus years, he said. Maybe more. The deviancy epidemic is serious. Being complicit in  _ inciting  _ it knowingly, well, that was just worse. Why, that android—

Nines opened his eyes. He looked at the detective, and the detective paused, smacking his lips as he leaned forward. “That android, huh?” he repeated, and Nines was too slow to look away to make the tick look unimportant. A grin stretched his lips, showing off the shiny white teeth lying in wait beneath. “Bet you’re curious what we did with it. Y’know, I’d be willing to tell you…”

“If I talk, right?” Nines said, his voice rough after so long of staying silent. 

The grin stretched wider. “Exactly.”

“What time is it?”

The detective furrowed his brow. His grin disappeared. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone. “Nearly six,” he said, putting his phone away. “Why? Got somewhere to be?”

Nines ignored that. He’d got out to the store around eleven this morning. He’d needed lunch and after spending so much time keeping Gavin in line, he’d run out of food in the fridge. So, he’d been here for seven hours then. This cop had too. Probably longer if he’d been the one to orchestrate that surprise arrest. 

“Contrary to what to movies say,” the detective drawled, impatience coloring his voice, “keeping quiet doesn’t actually help your case much. I’d help you if you talked to me. I don’t have to waste my time on you, y’know”

Y’know, y’know, y’know. Nines  _ did  _ know, actually, and he knew well enough that—

Another rattle. More icy cold air poured down on top of him. 

Nines shivered so hard that it hurt a bit. His hands were practically numb, trapped on the metal table, wrapped in metal cuffs the way they were. He couldn’t pull them back, couldn’t get them under his armpits or between his legs to get them warm. They’d leave him like this all night if they felt like it. And Gavin… Part of him knew they wouldn’t destroy him; he was evidence. But… did they need him alive for that? Cyberlife… God, they owned him. If they wanted him back, maybe they could do whatever they wanted with him whether or not it helped or hindered this detective’s case against him.

When it came down to it… When it  _ really  _ came down to it, Nines wasn’t sure he wanted to take the risk. He wasn’t sure what he had going for him if they got rid of Gavin. The android was a pain in the ass, but he was all Nines really had when it came down to it. He hadn’t felt much for awhile now. Getting Gavin… Freeing Gavin… That’d probably been the most Nines had felt alive in a few years now. The biggest rush he’d had in God only knew how long. 

The thought of Gavin drained of thirium and laying in some dump was a painful one. Very painful. 

“Fine,” he whispered, crossing his arms as much as he could manage while cuffed to the damn table. “I’ll talk. On one condition.”

“You’re in no position to be making demands.”

A roll of the eyes was all Nines bothered to give in response. “Then enjoy sitting in here with me for the rest of the night, Detective. I don’t have a family to go home to. I doubt anyone will miss  _ me  _ not coming home for dinner.”

The detective froze, cheeks mottling with color. He looked towards the one-way glass, then back at Nines with his jaw clenched so tightly that the tendons in his neck bulged outwards. “What’s your condition?” he said quietly, eyes full of impotent fury. 

God, that was rich. So rich that Nines almost wanted to string him along a bit more, milk it for all it was worth. If he wasn’t so uncomfortable, he might have. Unfortunately he knew well enough what it might get him if he did. These cops weren’t on his side no matter what they said. They were in the pocket of Cyberlife first and foremost, and the shit Nines had done had shaken them more than they wanted to let on. That meant they didn’t like him. They were  _ angry  _ with him. He wasn’t in a position of power no matter what kind of shit he knew. If he didn’t talk, they’d just raid his equipment, dismantle Gavin, and burn the earth behind them if it didn’t yield the coding they were looking for. 

Nines could fight it all he wanted. He could dig his heels in and be the massive bitch he was. Instead he relaxed in his seat and pointed his fingers upwards, accepting that sometimes it was better to take a small victory while he could still get it. 

“Turn off this fucking vent,” he said, looking at the detective with resignation weighing on his shoulders, “and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

He’d learn about Gavin’s fate sooner or later. Best not to let them know just how big of a chip they still had to play just yet. 

—

The streets were crowded in the way they always were at midday. Families and individuals flooded the streets in search of lunch, of shops to visit, of ways to kill a mundane Saturday in a way that wouldn’t break the bank. Nines pulled his hood higher over his head and kept his eyes down, hands shoved deep into his pockets as he threaded through the crowd and focused on his music in lieu of the conversation threatening to overwhelm him on all sides. 

He didn’t like leaving his apartment during the day. Hell, he didn’t like leaving his apartment period. He didn’t like people and he barely liked answering the door to grab the takeout he ordered most nights, but sometimes there were errands that had to be done that couldn’t be done online. Shocking in this day and age, but what could you do? If Nines were the type to trust a little more, maybe he’d be fine picking up a new hard drive without testing it in person first. But he wasn’t, so here he was. 

_ Here he was,  _ he thought sardonically, grunting as another person bumped into him roughly, slowly coaxing him to the side of the sidewalk closest to the road. Here he was stewing in human contact and craving the exact opposite. He took a grounding breath and told himself to focus on the music, to the pounding bass and the loud, lyrical screaming of a voice dripping with angry, base energy. It made it easier to be out when he couldn’t hear the voices of the masses clamoring past him. It made it easier to forget he was surrounded by other people, the kind he spent his whole life avoiding any chance he could. 

But it was fine. He was nearly at the fountain where the contact told him to meet at. It’d only take a few minutes to see the hard drive for himself, and then he could head back home and not see the light of day for another few weeks before something else broke on him and forced him out of his apartment. He stopped at the crosswalk and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for it to change. 

His music crackled oddly in his ears. Some sort of external interference. Nines glanced around and saw what was drowning it out. His lips parted. His eyes grew wide. With his headphones on it was impossible to hear what sort of noise came out of Nines’s mouth. Something loud, he figured, since the people standing closest to him definitely looked at him in concern. Nines ignored it though and kept staring at the construction crew across the street. Specifically, on the android nearest to the crosswalk demolishing part of a sidewalk with a jackhammer. 

Nines had seen plenty of androids in his time. Hell, he barely remembered a time in his life when androids weren’t commonplace. Half of the street he shared now was occupied by them, but this was quite possibly the first time Nines had ever seen an android so completely his type that it caused him to… to fucking emote. Emoting in general wasn’t something he did often, let alone… let alone like this. 

Sharp eyes, a yellow hard hat, an orange vest, and strong, muscled arms visible through the gaudy android clothing. With every undulation of the jackhammer, the android held tight and rode out the vibrations easily. It’s face was dusted with stubble and scruff, and even across the street Nines could see the slash of some sort of defect cut across its nose. A scar? Was it cosmetic or from damage received on the job? The crosswalk flickered green and bodies began to press against Nines on all sides, carrying him closer to the android in question. Nines’s mouth was dry. His heart hammered in his chest. 

He was closer now. The lapel on the android’s chest carried the designation GV500. Nines saw the same label on a few other androids on the construction crew nearby, but none of them shared the same appearance as this one. Jesus Christ, who designed this? Who the fuck made this android the spitting image of most of Nines’s wet dreams? 

His music pounded louder, switching to a new song. A louder song, one with more energy. Carnal. Nines swallowed and broke away from the stream of pedestrians, pausing at the edge of the construction barricades. 

The GV500 broke up the bit of sidewalk and switched off the jackhammer. It lifted its head and looked at Nines square in the eye. 

Nines stared back, mind a thousand miles away with thoughts he definitely shouldn’t be having in public. Shouldn’t be having at all if he were honest with himself. But… he was. He was having them, and picking up his hard drive quickly became the last thing on his mind. 

Who needed a new hard drive when he could just jailbreak an advanced android instead? 

\---

It hadn’t been easy, stealing an android from under the noses of the foreman, the government, and Cyberlife. It’d taken a lot of thought, a lot of preparation. Nines had figured in the average amount of time the work would take for that city block, then planned accordingly. A few bribes, a few hapless questions to overseers who really had nothing better to do than chase snipes and wander off to investigate the worried claims of a concerned citizen who had seen some terrible things while walking down the opposite city block. 

Honestly, the hardest part of the whole plan was summoning up the mettle to actually  _ talk  _ to fellow humans long enough to get them out of the picture. The rest came easy enough. 

Automobiles these days were all automated. A quick hack to the built-in cameras erased any footage of Nines arriving to the construction site. Another quick hack courtesy of his phone dealt with the pesky internal blackbox that marked where the car had been, how long it sat idle, and who all had logged its usage during the allotted rental time. Nines slipped out of the car and left it running, keeping the door open. This wouldn’t take long.

The foreman was gone, off chasing imaginary problems a few blocks over. Nines approached the block and quickly spotted the android of his dreams off by the cement mixer, still looking as perfect as ever as it poured rows of cement atop waiting rebar molds. The hour was late this time. Android crews were sanctioned to work into the night if there was a foreman on site to supervise, and that meant the streets were empty of witnesses for the most part. Those who might care enough to watch wouldn’t see much though. Nines had taken precautions. He’d worn a hard hat and orange vest, the picture of a foreman in every way that mattered. 

“Um, hi,” he said intelligently as he came up to the android in question. 

The GV500 didn’t even pause in its actions. It just kept pouring cement, acting as if it hadn’t heard him. Nines swallowed hard, his cheeks hot. Up close like this he could see that the android was shorter than him. Shorter by at least four inches. God, this android really was perfect. The scar across its nose definitely looked like it had been caused by damage on the job. It must have scratched deep enough to damage the chassis beneath the artificial skin projection. Construction bot like this, made to be disposable, it probably hadn’t factored in enough to warrant being sent in for repair. Nines stared for a few more moments, thinking that it suited the android’s face. Added some character to it. 

But now wasn’t the time to get distracted by thoughts like that. It was time to act. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, bringing out the code he’d prepared beforehand to register himself as an authority figure in the android’s priority center database. 

“You don’t know me,” he said quietly, staring at the android as he hit the send button with his thumb, “but we’re going to do some great things together.” Hopefully some dirty things too, but that could wait. Nines wasn’t in the habit of going to android strip clubs. If he wanted to be fucked by something that wasn’t alive, he’d just settle for his dildo. First thing first was cracking the coding, bringing out the deviancy everyone was talking about these days. Next would come… Well, whatever this android wanted, he supposed. That was what free will was all about. He’d just have to take the chance and see what it got him. 

His phone chirped. The code was sent. GV500 immediately stopped pouring the cement, rising up with the machinery still tilted down. Cement flooded out of the hopper and overflowed the mold. The android just stepped away from it, looking to Nines for its new task. 

Those stormy grey eyes were so.. Nines looked down at his phone and shifted, warm under the collar of his orange vest. “There’s a car there,” he said, nodding towards it. “Get inside. We’re going home.”

The android blinked. Its expression was blank, but Nines could imagine it twisted in a grin, frowning, being so expressive just beneath the programming holding it back. It nodded. Then, it spoke. 

“Of course,” it said in a pleasant, raspy voice. “I’ll follow you.”

Nines shivered so hard that he nearly dropped his phone in the cement. He nodded his head. He nodded it so hard that his ill-fitting hard hat slipped off his head and clattered onto the sidewalk beneath his feet. This was bad. This was so bad. Bad and stupid and idiotic all in one. Nines covered his mouth with his hand and let out a harsh breath, stepping over the cords that blocked off the construction zone from the rest of the street around it. None of the other workers so much as lifted their heads. Nines held his head high and tried to look purposeful as he guided the GV500 towards the waiting car. 

He would need to loop the footage to the CCTV cameras on this street. He’d have to make sure there was no footage of him coming or going caught, because the authorities were sure to check those first once this android was reported missing. A drone hovered over head, and Nines quickly snapped a picture of its serial number. Another thing to hack. He had his work cut out for him as soon as he got back to his laptop. With every step he took, the workload increased. The risk mounted. 

This was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done. 

No, it definitely was. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever done, and for the stupidest, most half-thought out reason too. He just hoped something came from it. He… God, he prayed something came from it other than the cops pounding at his door or a self-destruct function Cyberlife put into every android just to dissuade the kind of tampering Nines was about to be wrist deep in just as soon as he got back to his place. 

More importantly—Hell,  _ most  _ importantly, he thought as he shoved the android into the car, only allowing himself to touch just a little, to feel the muscles beneath those sleeves, the stocky cut of the android that Cyberlife must have designed specifically to ruin his life in particular, he just hoped his fantasies didn’t stay fantasies for long. 

He’d gone this far on a desire-soaked whim. He prayed it’d be enough to see it blow more than just smoke back into his face. 

— 

The detective stared at Nines like he was an idiot. 

“So, you did all this because… What? You were bored?”

Nines sank down into the seat, chin against his chest and eyes firmly locked on the shiny silver cuffs holding him to the table. “Yes,” he said. Bored. “That’s right.” Bored and  _ horny,  _ but one of those was slightly more valid than the other and there was no way in hell Nines was admitting to the latter when he’d already been fucked enough by this situation to negate that status for the foreseeable future. 

A low whistle cut through the air. The man shook his head and laughed,  _ laughed  _ at Nines. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’ve been doing this for nearly ten years.” He dragged a hand down his chin and stared at Nines as if trying to figure him out. “What kind of nightmare are you? You get  _ bored  _ and incite a code that creates deviancy—”

“Artificial deviancy,” Nines interrupted, because that was important. He didn’t think it was possible for a human to implant actual deviancy in an android. At least that’s what all his research so far had implied. “It’s not the same thing going on with the rest. It just… helps them along.” It gave them the makings of a personality, the ability to grow and build off of it in ways their program previously restricted. “Ga… GV500 still obeyed me. I just gave it the ability to grow past what it had been programmed to do. To  _ be.” _

“Call it what you want, kid,” the detective said, kicking back the chair to stand up. He made a hand gesture at the window and the door opened. In came two police officers. “You jailbroke Cyberlife’s programming because you were  _ bored.  _ You made a construction bot capable of cussing us out like the sons-of-bitches we are, and if that ain’t a step away from deviancy, then I don’t know what is.”

The officers came towards Nines and set to unlocking him from the table chains and back into regular handcuffs. Hands beneath his elbows lifted him from the chair. His knees  _ creaked,  _ and then they guided him towards the door, towards the detective leaning against it and assessing him carefully. 

“Was it worth it?” he asked, the officers pausing and in turn forcing Nines to pause too. “Stealing government property, tampering with code so complex it’d taken three engineers to make. Hell, you’ve evaded our nets for years now and then stuck your neck out just to nab that android off the street. You made a lot of mistakes doing all this. Was all of this worth it for the sake of  _ boredom?”  _

Before he could answer, the door opened and struck the detective in the back. He grunted, took a step away, and in popped the head of some secretary. 

“Detective Anderson, your wife is on the phone, she—”

Ah. Detective Anderson turned and smothered the rest of the message with a rushed, “I know, tell her I’ll be home soon. We’re just wrapping up some loose ends,” before gesturing to the officers holding Nines to bring him out of the interrogation room. 

Nines moved woodenly and let the detective lead him out the door.

He schooled his face and kept his eyes forward. Everyone was staring. Cops and convicts alike. Androids at every turn, going about their rote tasks. Nines’s eyes flickered over them, looking for pieces of Gavin in every LED he saw. 

Was it worth it?

Well…

—

So tired. 

Hands hurt. 

Eyes burned. 

Nines listed forward and caught himself before he could crash into his laptop, bracing himself with a hand he threw onto the table, displacing several empty cans of energy drinks and candy bar wrappers. He blinked lethargically and shoved himself upright once more to smack at his cheeks harshly.  _ Come on,  _ he told himself, cracking his stiff fingers before putting them back on the keyboard. He was almost there. So close. Just a bit more.

It was probably impossible. Doing this. Doing what he thought he could do. The android laid out on the table beyond the scope of the snack wrapper carnage looked like he was sleeping. Powered down to prevent a surge, nodes exposed so Nines could input line after line of code, searching for the exact sequence that would give life to his very own Frankenstein’s monster. 

The words kept reverberating through Nines’s head in time to the terrible weather pounding away at the window just behind him. It was probably impossible. Almost definitely impossible. Cyberlife hadn’t been able to find the root cause of deviancy yet and they  _ created  _ this coding, and here Nines was, just some backstreet hacker living out of an apartment he’d scammed atms and skimmed off corporations to afford, thinking he could somehow do better, to see what they hadn’t and warp it until it suited what he wanted to do. 

The android twitched with the next input. Nines glanced at the chassis, at the sculpted bulk of it all. His mouth went dry and he forced himself to look at the screen, not the android’s body. He kept typing. Kept running through every variation he could think of. The twitch was a good sign. The code command was simple.  _ Wake yourself up,  _ it said. Don’t wait for someone else to do it. Don’t listen unless you want to. If you want to live,  _ live.  _ Complex systems failed in simple ways. A simple request would be what got this to work. He just had to keep trying—

A low rumble of thunder vibrated through the apartment. It rattled the windows, rippled through Nines, and flickered the lights in ways that were far too befitting his current actions.  _ Literally Frankenstein,  _ Nines kept thinking.  _ You’re just a crazed fucking scientist trying to play god. _ If there was a power surge now he’d be fucked. He had to go faster. To work faster, to  _ get this done.  _ A lightning strike wouldn’t bring this android to life; it’d just fry every circuit in its chassis and then Nines would be well and truly fucked with nothing to show for it. 

He worked the code faster. Typos littered the script. He kept hitting run, run, run, run program. Another burst of bright light. Another thunderclap to follow. Hurry. Faster. Run, run, run. 

And then the worst happened. The lightning came. The thunder came. The room went black, and so did Nines’s computer screen. 

He stared at it for a moment, not truly processing why he now sat in absolute darkness. His fingers were still hovering over the keyboard. He sucked in a breath, then let out a loud, “Fuck.” No. No, this couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t… It really couldn’t end like this, could it?

Nines’s shoulders hitched. He hunched over and braced his elbows on the table, knocking more garbage to the floor. His eyes stung. He covered them with this fingers, staring through the cracks into the darkness in front of him. At the still body he could only see outlines of when more lightning came. 

All for nothing. He’d gone through all of that for nothing. 

He’d have to move, wouldn’t he? He’d need a full name change after this. Cyberlife wasn’t the sort of entity you went again. Even the best hackers knew better than to fuck with them, and here Nines had gone, stealing one of their androids, tampering with its code. Even if nothing came of it, if this got out… 

Nines kneaded ruthlessly at his eyes until he saw speckles of blue flood the black behind his eyelids. He was such an idiot. He dragged his fingers down his face and stared into the darkness. The speckles of blue danced among the black, but they all faded away one by one by one by… 

He sat a little taller. One wasn’t fading. One small, spiralling ring of blue at the head of the table. On the head of the android. 

There was no time to think, no time to process it. Nines scrambled free from his chair and tripped over the cans littering the floor. He swung out a hand and sent his laptop crashing to the floor. He didn’t stop to check on it. He shoved himself to the head of the kitchen table and cursed the power for going out. He couldn’t see the android’s face like this. All he could see was that ring of blue, spiralling, spiralling, processing. 

“H...Hello?” Nines whispered, voice cracked, dry, ruined after the three days he’d spent doing this. Coaxing life into something inhuman. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

Nothing. The storm raged outside the window. It was the loudest thing in the room aside from Nines’s heavy breathing. 

The world  _ beeped  _ at him, and then the lights came back on. Nines let out a choked shriek, stumbling backwards. His foot slipped on a stray snack cake wrapper. He tipped backward—

—And something firm gripped him by the elbow and yanked him forward, sparing him a rough collision with the floor. 

In the light of day—poetics, it was night—the GV500 looked like something otherworldly. Shirtless, patches of white chassis disappearing to be replaced with sunkissed skin and swatches of hair. Nines’s mouth went dry as he watched the android slowly sit upright. His hand was still locked around Nine’s elbow. 

Hope, desperation,  _ glee  _ filled Nines like a flood. He hadn’t ordered the android to help him. He hadn’t… Oh, god, he hadn’t told it to do anything short of wake up, but only if it wanted to. Had it…  _ worked?  _

“Tell me your name,” he said suddenly, and oh, God, that face. Those eyes. Stormy grey eyes turned to take him in in turn, and Nines felt his cheeks begin to burn as he looked at the android that had captured his fixation with just one glance. “What is your designation?” 

_ What do I call you? Did it work?  _

Did he really play God in the worst way imaginable?

“Gavin,” the man said, looking around the room in a daze. “My name is Gavin.”

Nines felt something lurch in his chest. Maybe his heart. Maybe something else. He licked at his cracked lips and squeezed the thigh beneath his hand, and then the hand still holding onto his elbow. He wasn’t in danger of falling now, but that hand still held onto him regardless. 

“Hello, Gavin,” he said, smiling wide enough to hurt his cheeks. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope yall liked that!! follow me over on twitter @tdcloud_writes for more dbh funtimes and check out my original work online if you like my writing style and wanna see more! you can find me under the name T.D. Cloud! until next time!


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